What role do students play in the quality of their education? Take five or ten minutes to write your reactions to the reading from Fried's The Passionate Teacher about the Game of School (GOS). Use the following questions as a non-binding guide to your writing. Don't worry about being too polished. Instead, write as much as you can for five or ten minutes.
What are the key indicators that the Game of School is being played?
How did the GOS influence your own view of school and learning in high school?
How are these views affecting your approach to being a student at URI?
What role do you think the GOS play in efforts to improve schools?
The Game of School definitely exists. Kids are constantly finding new ways to do less work while still getting the same grades as the kids that do all their homework. They find cheats and short cuts so they can procrastinate as long as possible and then cram as little as possible and still pass the test. Kids barely open their text books now and still manage to get A's and B's on their work, but they never actually retain any of the information. Teachers at my school did their best to be enthusiastic about learning and try to encourage people to do their work and read things multiple times to get the most they could out of it. But that can only get kids so far. Parents and peers need to focus more as a whole in order for kids to want to do more work. If they see that other kids are getting the same grades as them but doing half the work then they will find a way to do less work too. It happened to me in my psychology class because I was reading the chapters that were assigned and staying up late to take notes and go over vocabulary when the rest of my kids in my class would read the chapter summaries and then cheat on the tests and get better grades than me. Some kids never opened their books once. And now it still happens in my COM class where people found out that you can take post tests multiple times so that you will always get a 100 because my teacher doesn't require us to send them to her, she wants us to print them on our own. When teachers do this they allow kids to cheat their way to getting a 100 on their homework grades even if they never do it. I didn't realize that kids would still be doing this in college because I thought that if they were taking a class in college it was because they actually needed it for their future so therefor they would be interested in the topic but apparently that doesn't matter. People are only concerned with getting the minimum passing grade so they can move on to the next class, they aren't worried about retaining the knowledge even though they know they will need it for their future. Schools will not improve if people continue to play the GOS because it is a cycle that never allows kids to improve.
Quick-Write
What role do students play in the quality of their education? Take five or ten minutes to write your reactions to the reading from Fried's The Passionate Teacher about the Game of School (GOS). Use the following questions as a non-binding guide to your writing. Don't worry about being too polished. Instead, write as much as you can for five or ten minutes.The Game of School definitely exists. Kids are constantly finding new ways to do less work while still getting the same grades as the kids that do all their homework. They find cheats and short cuts so they can procrastinate as long as possible and then cram as little as possible and still pass the test. Kids barely open their text books now and still manage to get A's and B's on their work, but they never actually retain any of the information. Teachers at my school did their best to be enthusiastic about learning and try to encourage people to do their work and read things multiple times to get the most they could out of it. But that can only get kids so far. Parents and peers need to focus more as a whole in order for kids to want to do more work. If they see that other kids are getting the same grades as them but doing half the work then they will find a way to do less work too. It happened to me in my psychology class because I was reading the chapters that were assigned and staying up late to take notes and go over vocabulary when the rest of my kids in my class would read the chapter summaries and then cheat on the tests and get better grades than me. Some kids never opened their books once. And now it still happens in my COM class where people found out that you can take post tests multiple times so that you will always get a 100 because my teacher doesn't require us to send them to her, she wants us to print them on our own. When teachers do this they allow kids to cheat their way to getting a 100 on their homework grades even if they never do it. I didn't realize that kids would still be doing this in college because I thought that if they were taking a class in college it was because they actually needed it for their future so therefor they would be interested in the topic but apparently that doesn't matter. People are only concerned with getting the minimum passing grade so they can move on to the next class, they aren't worried about retaining the knowledge even though they know they will need it for their future. Schools will not improve if people continue to play the GOS because it is a cycle that never allows kids to improve.